Chapter 5: Child-like Curiosity Matched with Social Responsibility

Sir C.V. Raman too had insatiable curiosity to know everything on this planet as Swaminathan. Alike in their curiosity, they were also different in their outlook, particularly regarding the social purpose of science. To Raman, nothing else but his field of science mattered; his intense involvement in a specialised area of scientific pursuit had confined him to an ‘ivory tower’. Swaminathan, despite having had rather close association with Raman, chose to be a people’s scientist. He extended his hand in warmth to interact with social scientists. The expected natural obligation on the part of a people’s scientist is to establish a social contract of science. Considering the dismal food security scenario at the time of the independence of India in August 1947, and thereafter for the next couple of decades, the most appropriate social contract of science was to increase agricultural food production and availability of food mainly through the enhancement of the productivity of the crops as also the access to food by all people. With Indian agriculture having been a ‘gamble with monsoon’, droughts and famines have been a regular feature; the great Bengal famine of 1943–1944 loomed large as backdrop to India’s independence in 1947. To India’s first Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, it was a great concern that should a famine of the magnitude of the Bengal famine recur, the faith in self-determination of the people of young Independent India would be devastated. Pandit Nehru also understood that if agriculture in India would fail, nothing else in the domains of science, technology, education, industry, commerce, foreign policy and so on would ever succeed. Having been deeply conscious of this bottom line, he put agriculture and self-sufficiency in food at the top of the national agenda and proclaimed, everything else can wait, but not agriculture. Following this, several measures to stimulate food production, including land reform, irrigation, fertiliser production, strengthening of research and organisation of a national extension service were initiated in the 1950s. More land was brought under farming and augmentation of irrigation sources was also done. There was an increased production of wheat and rice, but productivity per unit area of land remained quite stagnant. The research goal was to enhance the per plant productivity with high levels of plant nutrition. Hence, late Dr. K. Ramiah in 1952 started a programme for incorporating genes for fertiliser response from japonica rice varieties to indica rice varieties at the Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI), Cuttack under sponsorship of Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). Swaminathan worked in 1954 in this project. The main aim was to select from segregating populations of indica X japonica crosses, lines which showed the ability to utilise nitrogen effectively about 100 kg/ha. This approach resulted in a yield of about 5 tonnes/ha. There were a few unexpected genetic problems rendering the speedy selection of high-yielding rice varieties from indica X japonica crosses difficult. Yet, a few varieties like ADT-27 and Mashuri cultivated in Tamil Nadu and Malaysia, respectively were developed…